Mubarak's foes begin to unify

Monday

Jan 31, 2011 at 12:01 AMJan 31, 2011 at 2:48 PM

CAIRO -- Egypt's powerful Muslim Brotherhood and the secular opposition banded together yesterday around a prominent government critic to negotiate for forces seeking the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, as the army struggled to hold a capital seized by fears of chaos and buoyed by euphoria that three decades of Mubarak's rule might be coming to an end.

The announcement that the critic, Mohamed ElBaradei, would represent a loosely unified opposition reconfigured the struggle between Mubarak's government and a 6-day-old uprising bent on driving him and his party from power.

CAIRO -- Egypt's powerful Muslim Brotherhood and the secular opposition banded together yesterday around a prominent government critic to negotiate for forces seeking the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, as the army struggled to hold a capital seized by fears of chaos and buoyed by euphoria that three decades of Mubarak's rule might be coming to an end.

The announcement that the critic, Mohamed ElBaradei, would represent a loosely unified opposition reconfigured the struggle between Mubarak's government and a 6-day-old uprising bent on driving him and his party from power.

Though lacking deep support on his own, ElBaradei, a Nobel laureate and diplomat, could serve as a consensus figure for a movement that has struggled to articulate a program for a potential transition.

ElBaradei defied a government curfew and joined thousands of protesters in Liberation Square, a downtown landmark that has become the center of the uprising.

"Today we are proud of Egyptians," ElBaradei told throngs who surged toward him in a square festooned with banners calling for Mubarak's fall. "We have restored our rights, restored our freedom and what we have begun cannot be reversed."

ElBaradei also criticized the Obama administration. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the rounds on the Sunday news programs with the message that Mubarak should create an "orderly transition" to a more politically open Egypt, while refraining from calling on him to resign.

But that approach, ElBaradei said, was "a failed policy" that was eroding American credibility.

"It's better for President Obama not to appear that he is the last one to say to President Mubarak, 'It's time for you to go,'" ElBaradei said.

The tumult yesterday seemed perched between two deepening narratives: a vision of anarchy offered by the government, and echoed by Egyptians fearing chaos, against the perspective of protesters and many others that the uprising had become what they called "a popular revolution."

The military, Egypt's most powerful institution and one embedded deeply in all aspects of life here, reinforced parts of the capital yesterday. It gathered as many as 100 tanks and armored carriers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the site of President Anwar Sadat's assassination in 1981, which brought Mubarak to power.

The Interior Ministry announced it would again deploy once-ubiquitous police forces - despised by many as the symbol of the daily humiliations of Mubarak's government - across the country, except in Liberation Square.

In a collapse of authority, the police had withdrawn from major cities on Saturday, giving free rein to gangs that stole and burned cars, looted shops and ransacked a fashionable mall.

Thousands of inmates poured out of four prisons, including the country's most notorious, Abu Zaabal and Wadi Natroun. Checkpoints run by the military and neighborhoods proliferated across Cairo and other cities in a bid to restore order.

The United States said it was organizing flights to evacuate its citizens today, and the U.S. Embassy urged all Americans to "consider leaving as soon as they can safely do so," in a statement that underlined a deep sense of pessimism among Egypt's allies over Mubarak's fate.

"We're worried about the chaos, sure," said Selma al-Tarzi, 33, a film director who had joined friends in Liberation Square. "But everyone is aware the chaos is generated by the government. The revolution is not generating the chaos."

Still, driven by some instances of looting - and rumors that swirled across Cairo, fed by Egyptian television's unrelenting coverage of lawlessness - it was clear that many feared the menace could worsen, and might even undermine the protesters' demands.

"At first the words were right," said Abu Sayyid al-Sayyid, a driver. "The protests were peaceful - freedom, jobs and all that. But then the looting came and the thugs and thieves with it. Someone has to step in before there's nothing left to step into."

Mubarak appeared on state television yesterday in a meeting with military chiefs in what was portrayed as business as usual. Through the day, the station broadcast pledges of fealty from caller after caller.

"Behind you are 80 million people, saying yes to Mubarak!" one declared.

For two days, clashes raged at Abu Zaabal, the prison north of Cairo, and officials said the police had killed at least 12 inmates there before abandoning it. Yesterday, scores of people passed in and out of the colonnaded entrance, hauling boxes and furniture through a black iron gate. Two army tanks were parked nearby, but declined to intervene in the mayhem.

The Muslim Brotherhood said 34 of its members walked out of Wadi Natroun on the road to Alexandria, after guards abandoned their posts. All of the men had been arrested before dawn Friday, the biggest day of the protests.

Since the uprising began last week, the Brotherhood has taken part in the protests but shied away from a leadership role, though that appeared to change yesterday. Mohammed el-Beltagui, a key Brotherhood leader and former parliament member, said an alliance of the protest's more youthful leaders and older opposition figures had met in an attempt to assemble a unified front with a joint committee.

It included ElBaradei, along with other prominent figures such as Ayman Nour and Osama al-Ghazali Harb, who have struggled to build a popular following.

"We're supporting ElBaradei to lead the path to change," Beltagui said as he joined ElBaradei in Liberation Square. "The Brotherhood realizes the sensitivities, especially in the West, towards the Islamists, and we're not keen to be at the forefront.

"We're trying to build a democratic arena before we start playing in it," he said.

Whether ElBaradei can emerge as that consensus figure remained unclear. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 for his work as director of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Even in Liberation Square, the crowd's reaction to ElBaradei was mixed - some were sympathetic but many more were reserved in their support for a man who spent much of his adult life abroad.

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